Traditional military training systems present displays to a trainee pilot or student which are derived from the aircraft's standard military equipment (e.g., aircraft air-to-air radar, Electro Optical (EO) sensors, tactical data links, Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) systems, and the like). Training data links, when in use, are traditionally used to provide situational awareness to an instructor or a Range Safety Officer (RSO) on the ground. These training data links may be tailored to provide a safety level associated with a single RSO observing the scenario from afar and able to maintain awareness on all scenario players. This presentation may be recorded for post mission player debrief as well as RSO debrief.
A training datalink may broadcast information not available on a traditional tactical datalink. For example, a training datalink by its nature may broadcast information descriptive of a training status of one of the players. In a scenario where friendly (Blue) forces are operating against hostile (Red) forces, the training datalink may broadcast the status of one of the Red players as “alive” or “dead”. An alive Red player may be defined as those assets labeled as training aids against which the Blue forces must operate whereas a dead Red player is one simulating a kill by the Blue forces. Conversely, in an operational tactical environment, dead bandits fall to the ground and are no longer able to provide a return to a Blue sensor for broadcast via the tactical datalink.
This additional training related information broadcast on the training datalink is traditionally not integrated in the training aircraft and is not available to training aircraft systems.
Current training scenarios may include additional entities not found in traditional training scenarios. Virtual entities (those simulated entities created through human interaction) as injected into a training scenario may enhance and add a level of difficulty to a training scenario not found in traditional systems. As these additional entities become part of a scenario, traditional systems are unable to categorize and accurately display the entities as desired.
Existing aircraft avionics systems may enable a correlation or multi-sensor-integration (MSI) function. This MSI function accepts data from multiple sensors (for example, a radar and a datalink) and fuses the data to display an accurate presentation to the pilot. Because these two sets of data come from distinct sensor systems, it is necessary to identify the subset of sensor data generated by each sensor that is attributable to same object in the real world environment. For example, by comparing the latitude, longitude, altitude, speed, heading, and other parameters of a target sensed by a radar to the equivalent set of parameters received via a tactical datalink, a set of “matching” targets can be provided, and shown on a common display. This integration results in all the returns from both sensors being presented, however the same object is not shown twice in the situations where two separate sensors independently observe a single target.
In traditional training scenarios, it is common for aircraft playing the role of hostile in the training scenario to be “killed” by simulated missiles during an engagement. In current training, these aircraft remove themselves from the scenario by turning 90 degrees to the fight and “kill removing” from the engagement. As the hostile aircraft are kill removing, each hostile pilot is tasked with exiting the engagement in a most expeditious manner to avoid interfering with the rest of the engagement. The hostile pilot kill removing must fly away from the engagement to attempt to fly outside the radar scan pattern of the Blue forces as not to interfere with the Blue forces tactics against the remaining Red forces. During this time, however, the kill removing aircraft may continue to appear on various aircraft sensors as a training artificiality.
This causes two problems—First, if the pilot is not aware that the aircraft are killed, they may become confused, and continue to engage the aircraft as if they were still an alive part of the scenario. Secondly, as the live aircraft are still in the airspace, the potential for a midair collision exists.
In a combat environment, each sensor will sense each target as it is able, and the MSI function will fuse each of the sensor's data to accurately present information to the pilot. However, in training presentations, a desired scenario may include a target (e.g., a dead Red bandit) kill removing from the fight after being simulated killed by the Blue forces.
Consequently, a need remains for a system and method able to integrate each entity found within a training datalink into a traditional MSI function where a training target is tagged and appropriately displayed based on the associated tag. Such a system may offer a trainee a presentation more accurately representative of a desired scenario than would the traditional integration functions of current art avionics.